Uneasy Remembrance
Twenty Fifth Day of the First Month 294 AC
The gilded devil follows your host's advice, dramatically melting into a flash of gold with a roar of distant flames. You do not speak until you have made certain to the best of your abilities that they are truly gone.
"I have not arrived here to aid you Far-Seer, but neither am I inclined to leave you to face it alone after this peaceful auction was so barbarously disrupted. You say it was by the lord of this place?" You shake your head and sigh as though in sadness and disbelief, though you do not try to project the former too hard. "I would know if the Lord of Heaven's Shore is the sort to employ thugs and snatchers that I might protect myself as I would in other
unsavory places."
"If you think this place is not unsavory, your tongue has grown as numb as a hana-sniffer's," Kimu snorts beside you as she motions for her guards to watch the door.
"And I am of course interested in a chance to bid for the lore that the honorable Echyr did not have a chance to put forth," you interject smoothly. "Lore is not like bright gems or bound sorcery, yes? It can be shared and not lessened in the doing."
"A secret less transforms the world like a pebble upon still waters, and in the ripples might another stone of the same sort fail to find purchase," the diabolic seer replies. "Still, the word of a witness not known to be an associate of mine could be of some use... if you are willing to lower your wards as it customary for judicial examination here."
Unlike the earlier sigh the grimace is wholly unfeigned.
"Ah... I see, or rather I do not see, but I can guess well enough," the devil chuckles softly. "You are capable of spells of the Ninth Circle, yes?"
"I am, though I have but recently come into the power, as mortals count such things." That should hopefully help explain how you can be an unknown to the wider Spheres, even to some familiar with the Opaline Vault. It is a well known fact that mortals can grow in power with dizzying swiftness by the measure of deathless spirits, 'trying to outrun their own deaths' the oft disparaging saying goes.
"Excellent, then you would not be lightly discounted," the devil mused. "I need someone to take that..." he motioned to the still amber-trapped handmaiden devil, "to the Fortress of Eternal Vigil. I would go myself, but the matter of my 'death' complicates the procedure of handing in a prisoner, and for various reasons others among our present company would not be welcome. If you would be content to briefly play the part of 'the greedy earth-born' fleeing with the prisoner in the hopes of getting a ransom from them, then the Blessed Guard will not know to seek you. Once the garrison has been apprised of this outrage, I am quite entertain it shall be settled quickly."
"Before I answer yea or nay, I first have a question of my own. If I am supposed to act against the Lord of Heaven's Shore, then I would know what quarrel he supposedly has with you that he would plot your demise," you ask cautiously.
Ser Richard's posture hardly changes, but you cans sense approval of this at least from his veiled form, if not the notion of embroiling yourself in the local politics at all.
"The book you seek, the memoirs of birth and death, of passage and becoming... some of them are Ezhekidich's own, and like many of his kindred in this age, he would rather not recall those most ancient days, much less have them known to another. I still do not know who could have revealed that I possessed such knowledge, but I am certain the guilty party will rise to the top eventually, like oil upon water," he finishes, almost in a whisper.
Another reason why he is not trusting any of his allies with the task, the words are unsaid, but hardly unknown.
Do you accept the task?
[] Yes, escort the gylou to the Fortress of Eternal Vigil
[] No, stay instead to help confront the Blessed Guard
[] Write in
OOC: Pretty straightforward update this time, it would have worked well last night, if only I could focus to write at all. 
